1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a voice mail system(VMS), and more particularly, to a system and method for unifying multiple connection ports of a voice mail system.
2. Background of the Related Art
Generally, a voice mail system (VMS) is closely connected to a switching system to thus provide a mail service that processes a user's call information using a number of protocols, such as No. 7, LAPD, R2, MST, etc, in a situation where the user can't answer a telephone call. FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a background art VMS.
As illustrated therein, one VMS 10 includes a plurality of (e.g.,four) main data processing units (MPUD) 11–14, and a main call processing unit (MPUC) 15 for call processing. Each MPUD 11–14 is connected with external servers 21–23 via a network. Each MPUD 11–14 processes data on a corresponding mail service according to input call information.
The external servers may include, for example, a VCS (Voice Compression System) server 21, a NCS (Network Control System) server 22, and/or a SMS (Subscriber Management System) server 23.
Here, the parts marked “a” indicate a network connection point of each MPUD 11–14 in the VMS 10. The parts marked “b” indicate a sender/receiver path between the VMS 10 and the external servers 21–23. The parts marked “c” indicate a network connection point of each external server 21–23.
In a background art system and method, voice files and number call information may be transferred from the VMS 10 to the external servers 21–23 (which is called a forward message transfer). When call information is input from the switching system to the VMS 10 upon the user's radio paging, the corresponding MPUD 11–14 in the VMS 10 transfers the call information to the VCS server 21 via its network connection point, after processing voice file information. In addition, the voice call information, and the number call information may also be transferred to the NCS server 22 via the corresponding network connection point.
In some situations, an overload control message and a mail box management message may be transferred from the external servers 21–23 to the VMS 10 (which is called a backward message transfer). The VCS server 21 may transfer overload information to each individual MPUD 21–23. In this instance, each MPUD 21–23 independently controls the overload of the VCS 21 using the received overload information. In addition, the NCS server 22 may also transfer overload information to each individual MPUD 21–23, and each MPUD 21–23 would then independently control the overload of the NCS server 22.
In other situations, the NCS server 22 may transfer a call result response message to a corresponding MPUD by managing the MPUD corresponding to a call.
In some instances, a mail box information management message (add, delete, modify, inquiry) may be sent by the SMS server 23 to a MPUD corresponding to a particular mailbox. The SMS server 23 would search for the MPUD corresponding to a particular mail box using independently embedded mail box information. The SMS server 22 would then transfer a mail box management message to the corresponding MPUD.
In this way, call information received through the switching system is processed by means of the VMS 10, and processed information is transferred to external servers, such as the VCS server, NCS server, etc., by TCP/IP and/or UDP/IP protocol methods. This allows the VMS 10 to provide various information services to a subscriber.
However, because the MPUC and MPUDs of the background art system have an IP network interface with an external server system, there can be trouble individually managing a module connected with the external servers. In addition, since multiple IP addresses are assigned to one VMS, external network management can be quite complicated. Further, since the MPUDs and MPUC in the VMS must be managed independently, the stability of the system is reduced.
Moreover, since the external server system transfers/receives messages to/from the MPUDs and MPUC of the VMS individually, information in the VMS may be lost, which degrades the safety of the VMS.
Also, because an individual board in the background art VMS is duplexed not as a duplex network at the system level, but according to the active/standby state of each individual board, all the boards must be exchanged even in the case of simple failure in a network module in an individual board.